Thursday, January 22, 2009

I feel a chilly wind blowing, and it is not coming from outside (for once). It is coming from that 2nd birthday Pebbles is about to hit. The Terrible Twos storm is blowing in.

She's still my sunshiney little girl, most of the time. Until you break her toast in half when she did not want it broken. Suddenly, there are rules in the house not imposed by the other ruling party, the 4-year-old. There are 2-year-old rules, the most terrifying and incomprehensible kind of rule there is, because of course this almost 2-year-old cannot articulate exactly what her rules are. Even when you're breaking them, sometimes, you have no idea what you're being punished for.

What? You don't want raisins? You don't like this bowl? You want them with a spoon? WHAT?

Sometimes even she doesn't know what she's fussing about. Because sometimes, after I've cycled through all the choices, I try going through them again, and she stops crying and says, tearily, "OK," for one of the things that just made her scream 2 seconds before.

Despite what many experts will tell you, I know it's more about being 2 than it is about inability to communicate. I know this because Nutmeg could communicate just fine at this age. And she still had the fits. Oh, did she ever.

I think it's more about realizing that the chaotic world is mostly beyond your control, and wanting desperately to take power. I often feel like that, myself. And come to think of it, that's when I have my tantrums, too.